


Cold Feet

by aeli_kindara



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon-Typical Everything, M/M, POV Mickey, S1 to S4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:30:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17475323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: It’s around when he gets shot — and Ian grabs his face and visits him in juvie and tells him he fuckingmisses him— that Mickey starts getting cold feet, the first time.(Ian and Mickey's relationship, 1.07 through 4.11. Or: three times Mickey got cold feet, and a fourth time that doesn't count.)





	Cold Feet

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank xylodemon for shouting about Shameless until I started watching it, and then shouting about fic with me. 
> 
> Warnings for, um. Everything in this show? So like: violence, teen sex, child abuse, reference to parental incest, gallons of homophobia; also, trigger warning for associated trauma responses including dissociation and fragmentary flashbacks.

The first time Ian spins him around and bends him over his own bed, Mickey’s so fucking surprised he forgets to beat the kid shitless.

Milkoviches aren’t faggots, and if they were, they sure as hell wouldn’t take it up the ass. Which is to say: yeah, he has, mostly fumbling around under the covers of his own bed with a lot of lube and a PVC assist; once or twice he’s dressed up like a fucking twink and gone out to some club way the hell up in Lakeview. That’s it, though. He ain’t about to shit where he fucking eats, and that’s pretty fucking literal in the case of Ian Gallagher.

It happens fast, though. Later, when he’ll replay it in his head with his dick in his hand, it’ll go syrup-slow — the fight, the fuck. Ian pinned between his thighs with wide eyes, lips parted, Mickey’s morning wood pitching a fucking tent in his face; the answering throb of attention that brushes, just brushes, Mickey’s ass. And that’s it, he’s fucking gone, thinks he’ll — get his dick in Gallagher’s mouth, maybe, he looks thirsty enough for it, Mickey wouldn’t mind yanking a bit on that ginger hair, and then —

Then: Ian squirming from under him, battling free of his coat, flannel, t-shirt. Then: that fucking grin on his face, one corner of his mouth then the other, hands jerking his own fly open, eyes raking down Mickey’s abs, then —

That’s the part that’ll make Mickey’s shoulders go tight and breath shallow and heart do that stutter-swoop of shock, later. Every fuckin’ time.

It doesn’t, in the moment. Or shit, maybe it does, and he’s too crazy with it already to notice; maybe _he wants to fuck you he wants to fuck you he wants to fuck you_ is already a revelation running a litany through his brain. Things get disconnected, after that, specific: rutting against Ian’s dick through the fabric of his boxers, both of their pants still trapped around their thighs; the condom Ian frees from his pocket before he lets Mickey shove his jeans the rest of the way down; the whispered _I’ve got lube in my coat, let me — behind the pillow, Jesus fuck —_

Long story short, Mickey rolls with it. _You can take him down easy,_ he tells himself, or maybe later pretends he tells himself; _sweet-faced little punk of a kid —_ not like anyone would believe this story even if Gallagher did try selling it. ‘Cause he is, he’s fucking sweet, get eaten alive in juvie with that smile and those eyes _,_ except for how he’s balls deep in Mickey’s ass and snapping _deeper_ and making Mickey claw his fingers in his bedspread and choke down ragged breaths and forget his own goddamn _name_.

“If you try to kiss me, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out,” he says, later, after the close call with Terry has shaken him back to reality; he needs something, here. Some kind of fucking boundary. Something to stop him short of grinning his stupid face in two every time he thinks about _Ian fucking Gallagher._

It’s a one-time thing. A best-fucking-sex-of-his-life one-time thing, sure, but this whole feeling in his chest like he’s crazy, like he wants to vault a ten-foot chain-link every time he catches a glimpse on the street of red hair — that’s got to go. It’s a one-time thing, but he needs it out of his system, he’s crawling out of his fucking skin with it, so: two-time thing. It can’t have been that fucking good. He’ll just: waltz into the Kash and Grab one day when Ian’s working alone. See what he thinks he’s gonna do about it.

It’s that fucking good.

Mickey spends the next three days in a quiet state of existential panic interspersed with occasional euphoria. He considers murdering Ian Gallagher and dumping his body in Lake Michigan. He considers moving to Mexico.

Then he gets home one day to find all six fucking feet of red-headed jailbait sprawled out on his couch playing schoolmarm with his fucking sister, and thirty seconds later Ian’s got him pressed up against his own bedroom door panting, “Get it in me, Christ, get it — fucking _Gallagher_ —” and that’s about when he knows he’s done, fucking ruined, the life of Mickey Milkovich will never be the same.

Well, shit. Good to have that sorted. Mickey helps himself to a pizza bagel, and commences setting all his clocks to Ian Gallagher’s time.

\---

It’s around when he gets shot — and Ian grabs his face and visits him in juvie and tells him he fucking _misses him_ — that Mickey starts getting cold feet, the first time.

He should’ve seen it earlier. He should’ve pulled the plug the moment Gallagher came running to him for fucking _comfort,_ like a goddamned relationship, but he’d been too — too — too distracted wanting that fucking look off Ian’s face, wanting his goddamned smile back, wanting. To feel important, to indulge this fantasy that he fucking _matters_ to someone. To Ian. First shit-fuck-damned mistake.

‘Cause this? Is not okay. It’s one thing for Mickey to be privately kind of in love with one Ian Gallagher, but for Ian? To see him as something other than — a warm hole? Attached to a body that could _fuck him up,_ if Mickey so chose?

That’s not in the cards. It’s just not.

“You say that again, I’ll rip your tongue out of your head,” he tells him.

Ian smiles that _stupid fucking smile,_ the one that makes Mickey want to, to pick a fight with a dozen guards to impress him, to break through the shatterproof glass and fucking _kiss_ him, to shove Ian down to his knees and get his hands in his hair and —

He can’t do any of those things. He _shouldn’t_ do any of those things. He thinks about hanging up, looks away — he could pick a fight with jello guy, maybe — barely catches a twitch of his mouth before it becomes a smile. When he looks back, Ian’s splaying his fingers against the pane between them, like he’s a fucking _war bride._

Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Take your hand off the glass,” Mickey says, and hangs up, and goes to jerk off in the bathroom and panic, quietly, inside the peace of his own head.

\---

He wavers for all of April and half of May before he stabs jello guy with a plastic fork. It buys him thirty extra days.

\---

The day he gets out, Mandy’s there to greet him. So’s Ian, with new muscles filling out his t-shirt and a lethal tilt to his eyebrow and some bullshit excuse about a bad neighborhood, putting his arm around Mickey like he thinks he’s actually gonna get away with that shit.

He’s not, but just being around him’s turning Mickey’s body into a live wire; he’s half-drunk on the sun and the smell of sweat and the freedom, doesn’t stop himself from touching his fingers briefly to Ian’s hip — his shirt clings to his hipbone, his hair’s shorter, skin gleaming with sweat — when they pause on the Milkovich front steps.

“Baseball field later? Round ten?” he murmurs, as Mandy clatters with the doorknob, and Ian doesn’t answer. He doesn’t fucking have to. He looks down at Mickey’s hand and up at his face and the corner of his mouth does that thing where it quirks all slow.

Mickey shivers, in spite of the heat.

Ian watches it happen.

“Are you coming in or not? We got the fan on,” Mandy demands from the doorway.

Mickey can feel sweat trickling down his balls. “I gotta run,” Ian says, “I’ll catch you later,” and he does, takes off at a jog down the sidewalk, shoulderblades shifting under the fabric of his shirt. For a long moment — too long — Mickey watches him go.

In the doorway, Mandy crosses her arms. “Jesus, what, did juvie turn you gay or something? Come _on,_ you’re letting the hot air in.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Mickey, “you got any smokes in this joint,” and ducks past her guard for another titty twister before tripping, laughing, over the threshold and away from her shrieks, into his family’s home.

\---

Ian is this: slick skin and hard muscle in chain-link shadow, throat working on Mickey’s half-shotgunned beer. Bicep, jawline, callused fingers; chin tilting toward the shadowed ceiling of the dugout, eyelids fluttering closed.

Ian is a beer-sloppy mouth Mickey could imagine on his, and broad hands he doesn’t have to imagine. They’re inside his shirt, on the back of his neck, in his hair; they’re on his hips, demanding, jerking him back into quick thrusts that make his asshole stretch and his blood burn and his breath come out of him in quiet little _oofs_ as he tries to catch up — it’s been _too fucking long,_ Jesus, Ian’s rhythm is insistent, and Mickey’s — there, he’s there, he’s there.

Ian’s hold tightens on Mickey’s left hip, hard enough to bruise. His right hand splays across Mickey’s stomach; for a moment, like he’s exploring, stretching his fingers as wide as they’ll go across the canvas of Mickey’s skin. Then his abs tense against Mickey’s ass and his hips make an enthusiastic gyration and he _pulls,_ flattens Mickey back against his chest with his hands pinning him there and his dick so deep inside Mickey almost sees stars, yells out a choked sound and claws at the chain-link for balance, but Ian won’t fucking let him go. Ian —

Ian traps him there, pressed flat between his palm and his dick, abs quivering and sending electric sparks through Mickey’s body every time they do. He doesn’t move. Mickey stills and sweats and tries to grind into him and can’t and fucking _whines,_ he’ll deny it ever happened but he does, he’s got no leverage and he _needs_ it, fuck, needs Ian and needs and needs —

Ian’s hand drops to Mickey’s dick. His teeth drop to Mickey’s shoulder. He pivots his hips once, again — _deep,_ fucking deep, _fuck_ — and that’s it, Mickey’s coming, clenching and shaking and not quite screaming, and _thank God_ Ian shoves him forward again before it’s even over and starts fucking into his ass in earnest, fucking pounding him, his own breath coming short and ragged and stuttering over the edge in great gasping thrusts. Mickey digs back into him, and Ian’s hands fasten over his in the wire and tighten until the grooves of it are carved deep across his palms.

Ian is: buttoning his jeans again, still breathless, quiet where Mickey is loud. Ian is endless prattling about school and life and ROTC, some stupid desire to go get killed for his country, some stupid notion of _making_ something out of his life, and apparently Mickey’s, too, as if they aren’t both fucked for good. Ian is the warm, healthy stench of salt and sweat; Ian is impatient fingers reaching for Mickey’s cigarette. Ian is the night-green of the grass and the rumble of unseen trucks and the cold trickle of condensation down the side of Mickey’s beer.

“You ready to go again, or you, ah — need some _time,_ Firecrotch?” Mickey asks.

Ian’s that smile, the one Mickey’d probably kill people for, the one that says he’s got Mickey’s number and means to make fucking use of it. He bends Mickey over with a hand at the back of his neck, and Mickey grins around his cigarette, and goes.

\---

A fact about Mickey Milkovich is: he’s a fucking coward.

You wouldn’t think it, to look at him. Most people don’t, which is lucky for them, ‘cause he’d beat the shit out of anyone with the balls to say so. That doesn’t change what he knows, and he knows — can’t remember not knowing — that he’s a chickenshit scared-ass little pansy bitch who spends most of his life and time and energy on fronting as anything but.

It’s not like he’s the only kid on the South Side with a dad who whaled on him growing up. Shit, he’s not even the only one in his own damn family. Mandy’s had it worse than he has, by a long fucking shot; he still remembers, hard as he tries not to, the first time he found her on the couch with her eyes glassy and her skirt up around her hips, morning after one of Terry’s benders. Remembers sitting there next to her, wordless, her body rigid and not quite touching his, both of them staring at the pistol on the coffee table; remembers daring his hand to reach out and take it, his feet to march into Dad’s bedroom, his finger to find the trigger and squeeze —

It’s a game he’s played with himself half the days of his goddamn life. Sometimes he’s sat on the edge of his bed with a gun in his hand for hours, listening to his dad move around the living room, yell about dinner, go out and come back in again, thinking — _Walk out there and shoot him. Wait under the porch stairs and shoot him. Catch him taking a dump and shoot him._ He’s pictured the blood spatter on the toilet, his dad’s face frozen in an expression of comical shock. He’s pictured the gun knocked from his hands, himself beaten senseless, to death even; it doesn’t seem so bad. Mickey’s not that scared of dying; no more than anyone else is, probably less than plenty. He’s scared of Terry.

“Gonna make you some coffee,” he told Mandy, that morning, and felt her eyes follow him out of the room. She didn’t speak. The gun lay untouched. Mickey Milkovich: fucking coward.

The second time he gets cold feet, Frank catches them fucking in the freezer, and Mickey’s fear proceeds to burn everything down.

It doesn’t escape him that he’s a hell of a lot less terrified of killing Ian’s dad than his own.

None of this fucking escapes him. “You’re nothin’ but a warm mouth to me,” he snaps, like he’s not begging Ian to hurl his own words back at him; “I’m doing a lot of people a favor — including you.” He’s the lowest kind of hypocrite there is.

And yeah, it occurs to him that there’s another path. That if he’s going full homicidal anyway, he might as well cut out the middleman. Go straight to the source of all his problems. But Terry’s not in the house, nowhere to be found, and there’s no time to sit around with his dick in his hand and wait.

Only: he can’t do it.

He’s coming up hard behind Frank, mask on his head and gun in his hand, steps quick on the sidewalk, when the sirens start. And he —

He’s not getting out of this one. He’s gonna go away for a long fucking time. He’ll probably never see Ian again.

At least Terry won’t be able to fucking kill him until they transfer him from juvie to state.

The third option expands into his chest alongside an element of delirium. In some tilting reality, he grins; he laughs. In this one, he breathes hard, in, out, and drops the gun into the trash.

“Hey, officer!” he shouts down the sidewalk, striding back the way he came. “Oink oink!”

His punch lands hard. He hits the pavement harder. “This violating my probation?” he yells, as they wrench his arms behind his back, and he laughs, through the shouts and flashing lights and occasional whoop of the siren, all the way back to the station.

\---

Ian doesn’t come to visit in juvie, this time, which is only to be expected.

Mickey thinks about him, though, every damn minute of every day. He finds someone to fuck, and spends the whole time with his head full of Ian: whether he’s also pounding into someone’s ass somewhere. Whether it’s as good for him as it was with Mickey. What he’d feel like, inside Mickey, right now; what he’d look like, all pale alien skin and freckles, under the sickly prison lights.

There’s something the fuck wrong with him. No one gets turned on by that shit. Mickey gasps, heaves forward, and pumps his come into Anonymous Prison Dude’s ass.

Later, in his bunk, rubbing his thumb absently down the seam of his pants where it presses against his dick, he thinks about that last time, in the store. Helpless on his back as a fucking turtle, freezing his balls off, legs in the air. Calf muscle cramping. Ian’s grip on his ankle cutting off the flow of blood to his toes. Mickey always used to bitch about that stupid position but he _loved it_ — loved every goddamn second of it. Loved watching Ian’s face go slack and joyous, a work of fucking art when he comes.

If he could go back — could he just — pretend Frank isn’t even there. Catch Ian by the hips and grit his teeth and rock them together, _keep going,_ until Frank goes away. As if nothing ever happened; as if nothing has to change.

Ian’s probably moved on. He didn’t last time, yeah, but that was — different. His wires were all crossed; freaking out about his mom, about Mickey getting shot. Probably sent the signals in his brain haywire. Made him feel some kind of — attachment, or some crap. Obligation. That won’t happen this time; not with the shit Mickey did. The shit he said.

He tells himself it’s for the best. “How’s that boyfriend of yours treating you?” he asks Mandy, aiming for the right balance of not-giving-two-fucks, and she rolls her eyes and drawls, “Fine. He asked about you.”

Mickey’s traitor pulse quickens. “Yeah? What about?”

“Nothing.” She shrugs. “He says you’re pissed at him. How come?”

“I ain’t pissed at nobody.”

“Now that’s a lie,” she snorts, eyebrows rising with interest. She smiles, leans close to the glass. “Come on, what happened? He said he pussied out on you.”

“He did, huh.” That’s some rich fucking irony. Mickey stares down at the webbing between his fingers. At the lettering on his knuckles: _U-UP._

“Fine,” hisses Mandy, smile dropping off her face, “don’t tell me. Just don’t fucking get him involved in running drugs or whatever if he doesn’t want to, all right? He’s one of the good ones. He doesn’t deserve to be caught up in our family’s shit.”

No fucking lie. A pit gnaws at Mickey’s stomach.

“He’s got enough of his own to be getting on with,” Mandy adds, righteous. She looks pale, a little greener than even the shitty fluorescent lights should justify, and suddenly Mickey’s seized by that other fear. _If Dad —_ “His mom’s home, and fucking things up. Again.”

Mickey closes his eyes. Just for a moment. Just long enough to let the one-two gut punch hit him and fade; to remember Ian on his porch, cheeks wet and eyes wild — _I need to see you._

Fuck.

He’s fucking useless in here. He needs to get out. He needs to be free if he’s gonna have any chance of looking out for the people he fucking loves.

It’s the kind of bravery that strikes him once in a blue moon; it’ll fade. “Hey,” he tells Mandy, fiddling with the receiver, “Ian’s tough. He’ll be all right.”

She smiles, a little watery.

He thinks, _I’m going to kill fucking Terry,_ as if it were true.

\---

By the time he gets out, he’s a dead man walking, and he almost doesn’t care.

Way he sees it, he has two choices: hiding in prison for the rest of his life, or fucking Ian — assuming Ian’s on board — and letting the cards fall where they may. _Where they may_ probably means his dad finding out, sooner or later, and that eventuality is still a black hole in his head — he can’t look straight at it, can’t stop his thoughts from skittering away — but what the hell. If it’s gonna happen anyway, he might as well make it fucking worth it.

He finds Ian under the bleachers, balls deep in some babbling ROTC cockslut. Fuckin’ amateur. Mickey kicks his ass, a couple extra blows ‘cause he can see Ian’s incredulous smile, and takes his place.

“Missed you,” he says after, like it’s no big thing, like he hasn’t come here to renege on all his past promises and offer himself to Ian however he’ll take him. He takes a deep pull of his cigarette to hide the shaking in his hands.

Ian’s looking at him like he’s grown an extra head. “You did?”

Mickey hedges. “Had to do all the fucking in juvie,” he says, as if that happened more than once. “Nice to switch back.”

It’d be cool to know — if he’s gonna put his life on the line for this asshole — whether Ian gives two shits about him, is all.

So he fucks Angie Zago. He tails Ian to his _happy hour_ date with fucking Dr. Pedophile, drinking fancy liquor out of heavy-bottomed glasses, their laughter carrying over the open air to where Mickey waits on the sidewalk, chugging warm beer. He’s drunker and angrier than he realizes until they’re stumbling out across the street, crowing about some guy copping a feel, as if there’s a line between that perv and this one, and Mickey’s had enough, steps out to get in their way.

“Shit,” says Ian, “Mickey,” and Mickey thinks, _yeah, that’s right._

“Oh,” says Lishman — yes, Mickey’s learned his name, wouldn’t have fucking bothered if he weren’t contemplating murder, research is important — “from the store, right? Come on, Ian, don’t be rude, invite your boyfriend back to my place. I mean, the more the merrier, right?”

There’s an alcohol-blurred alarm going off in Mickey’s brain. He smiles like he means it to hurt.  “I’m sorry. What’d you call me?”

Later, after he’s beaten Ian’s wrinkly fuck-buddy into the pavement — kind of a pattern with him lately, what of it — after they’ve sprinted shoving and laughing and wrestling down alleys, away from the cops, lungs burning — he grapples Ian behind a dumpster overflowing with cardboard, shoves him back against the wall, drops to his knees. He can afford to be generous; not like fucking Lishman’s gonna be up for this for a while, the way Mickey busted his face. He yanks Ian’s pants just far enough down to trap his thighs. Lifts his eyes up the line of Ian’s body to watch, greedy, as his head tips back against brick, as his mouth stretches in a grin.

The skin under his jaw is nearly translucent in the sunlight, less freckled than the rest of him. His shirt snags on the muscles of his chest. Mickey holds on with both hands to the sharp blades of his hips, but he lets Ian set the rhythm, fucking into the back of his throat deep and slow, and this isn’t something Mickey ever tried before Ian but he fucking loves it — how he can swallow around him and make Ian’s ribcage arch with helpless pleasure. How Ian’s fingertips press hard and precise on the back of his head, how his thumbs brush Mickey’s ears.

When Ian’s breath comes ragged and his hips start losing their step, he pushes Mickey suddenly away. Mickey loses his balance and lands on his ass, a pit opening momentarily around his heart, but then Ian’s dragging him upright, spinning him flat against the wall. He gasps for breath and tastes mortar dust, feels brick chafe through his shirt, Ian’s breath hot and unsteady by his ear. He drowns a gratified groan before it can escape his chest.

They fuck in the sun, dozens of blocks and a thousand miles from anyone who knows their names.

Later still, on the rooftop of the abandoned projects where Ian likes to do his ROTC drills, Mickey considers that word: boyfriend. Maybe that’s what Ian wants. Hell, he might’ve told Lishman he had one. Mickey has no idea how he’s supposed to fucking feel about that concept.

“I don’t know what you see in that geriatric viagroid,” he says.

Ian cocks the fake rifle against his hip — Mickey’s offered to get him a real one — and squints up at him. The white of his shirt makes his skin look tan, for a fucking redhead. “He buys me stuff. Orders me room service.”

Mickey aims his gun randomly at the sky, fires off two rounds. This whole helping-with-Ian’s-training thing is pretty fucking therapeutic sometimes. The shots echo off the graffitied walls.

“He isn’t afraid to kiss me,” Ian says.

\---

So: that’s the thing. Which is hilarious, ‘cause it isn’t even a fucking _thing._

Yeah, okay: he did tell Ian he’d rip his fucking tongue out, the one time he tried. That was — situational, though. They’d already fucked; Ian was going in for the little, what, _thanks-for-having-me_ peck on the lips, like somebody’s fucking girlfriend. Obviously Mickey stopped him. Who fucking wouldn’t?

And yeah, maybe they haven’t been — making out during sex, or whatever, but that’s just ‘cause they know what they like. This isn’t _Pretty Woman,_ for Christ’s sake; Mickey’s got nothing against a little tongue-on-tongue action. Ian’s blown the whole thing out of proportion, if _that’s_ his fucking hangup.

 _Clearly you don’t know what he likes,_ a part of his brain whispers. _Ned fucking Lishman knows what he likes._

Not a fucking problem. Next time they get some time to themselves, he’ll shove Ian up against a wall and show him exactly what his mouth can do.

Only: he chickens out. And then he chickens out again, the next chance; it’s not even his goddamn fault. Ian doesn’t give him any openings. He’s all quick, hard hands, gripping Mickey’s shoulders, his neck, forcing his thighs apart with one knee. Just the way Mickey wants it. Just the way Mickey’s taught Ian he wants it, only sometimes he wants —

The times Ian _really_ fucks him up, gets Mickey down on his back with a hand on his chest, on his throat. Fucks him across the floor, wraps Mickey’s legs around his hips and stares down into his eyes and dips his head to suck bruises into his skin. The times Mickey hangs on for dear life and feels like he’s drowning, drowning, like Ian’s eyes are the world, wants Ian’s breath in his own lungs, and he could arch up and take it. He could slam their mouths together, knock his lips bloody on Ian’s teeth, thrust his tongue past Ian’s and show him exactly — exactly —

Exactly fucking what?

Maybe that’s not what Ian’s asking for. Maybe he’s after the peck on the fucking lips.

The idea fills Mickey with a nauseous cocktail of pleasure and dread. It’s the boyfriend thing, again; maybe that’s what Ian wants. For Mickey to stop fucking Angie Zago — fine, all right. Maybe Ian’s looking for an excuse to break things off with his own doddering charity case. Makes more sense, frankly. Shit, Mickey could buy him things, if that’s what he’s into these days.

Especially once they pull off this robbery scheme. But first things first: if it’s a peck on the lips Ian wants, it’s a peck on the lips he shall fucking have.

He psychs himself up for it all day. Watches Ian’s mouth sidelong as they idle through traffic, all the way up to the North Side. Follows his cousins up the Lishmans’ front walk, mutters about forgetting something; ducks back to the van. Slings himself across the passenger seat to press his lips to Ian’s, a shock of nicotine and something tugging behind his sternum, elastic, and then he’s running for the house again, grinning, raising his middle finger high in the air as he goes.

Mission fucking accomplished.

Mickey steals three paintings. A rug. A fucking urn that might still have some dickwad’s ashes in it. Booze. A useless skinny table with a marble top; rich people like that kind of shit. A grandfather clock.

It’s the grandfather clock that fucks him.

“You got shot, Mickey!” Ian yelps, as he flings himself into the van, ass a blaze of agony, blood soaking his jeans. “Yes, I fucking know I got shot!” he yells back, and the tires squeal, and later —

Later, sprawled on Ian’s kitchen counter with _fucking Lishman_ behind him wielding tweezers the size of railroad spikes, digging shotgun pellets and at least half his gluteal muscle out of Mickey’s ass, he clenches his fists and bellows through the pain and thinks, to himself: _it was fucking worth it._

\---

The third time Mickey gets cold feet is —

They should be more careful. They shouldn’t fuck in plain view of the front door. They shouldn’t lounge on the couch making out like fucking thirteen-year-olds into the early hours of the morning, to a soundtrack of gunfire and swelling music and the flickering light of the TV.

_The door —_

They shouldn’t walk around the house naked. They do anyway. The world feels wide and still and quiet, that morning, expansive, _theirs,_ and Mickey wants this. No hurried back-of-the-store sex this time. He wants the daylight on his skin.

_The door bangs —_

He might still be drunk. Everything feels possible; he wants everything. He goes to find the Ben Wa beads he keeps hidden under the couch in his room, the ones he bought at the sex shop out in Des Plaines and told the cashier were for his girlfriend. Remembering her smirk made him pretend they didn’t exist for weeks. He’s sick of pretending. He’s sick of building his life on a chassis of fear.

_The door bangs — the door bangs open —_

Ian’s bleeding before Mickey manages to wrap his arms around Terry’s shoulders and haul him clear.

Time is sliding; what’s happening? Who is he? A fist hits his face: his father’s. Someone’s father’s. His body knows how to fight back — how to kick or claw or punch his way free — but his mind is frozen. It’s falling away, a child’s screaming in his ears.

A face twisted with rage filling his vision. Blood filling his vision. _Stay still. Don’t make him angrier. Don’t make this worse —_

He comes back to himself with some bitch’s cunt rubbing up and down over his limp dick.

Ian’s still sitting in the armchair. There’s blood on his face, on his chest. He’s looking at Mickey like Mickey just stabbed him in the heart. Like he’s watching Mickey die.

It’s too much. A connection breaks.

There is, somewhere in the world, a person named Mickey Milkovich. A cowardly criminal dickhead who’s in love with another man. With this man: Ian Gallagher. Who’s turning away from him, clenching a battered jaw and fucking into sloppy, indifferent pussy, until his dick finally gets with the program; until it hardens enough to do what he needs it to do. What his father commands.

All those things are happening to this body he’s in, so Mickey guesses that asshole must be him.

\---

The third time Mickey gets cold feet is the worst time, because he never expected his world to keep turning after it ends.

\---

“You love me,” says Ian, “and you’re gay,” as if that was ever the fucking question.

\---

Beating him up feels good, in the moment. It feels good later, too, because it feels like no more than Mickey fucking deserves. He should be carrying the guilt of Ian’s blood on his hands.

\---

Ian fucks him on his wedding night, for the first time in months. For the last time, looks like, because after — when he comes by the house carrying silence in the line of his back, in the muscles of his face — he lets Mickey’s meager peace offerings crumple on the floor like the pitiful things they are.

“I’m leaving town,” he says. “Army.”

It takes Mickey a long minute to believe him.

He’s gonna get himself shot. He’s gonna be dead in fucking Kandahar and Mickey won’t even fucking know.

“What are you hoping, I tell you not to go?” he demands. “I’m gonna chase after you like some bitch?”

Ian just shrugs and looks away. “I didn’t come here for you.”

It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair, after everything Mickey’s lost — after everything he’s risked, to keep them together. All the fucking compromises he’s made, getting his dad off his back, the past months. After Svetlana.

“Don’t,” Mickey manages, eyes stinging. “Just —”

Ian turns away.

Mandy is in his doorway. “Really? That’s all you’re going to say to him?”

Apparently, Mandy knows.

“You’re a fucking pussy,” she snaps, and leaves him to his useless fucking tears.

\---

Dad had a friend, when Mickey was a kid, who’d been in Vietnam. He came back with a slug of shrapnel in his belly, untreated; by the time the doctors found it, they said he’d die if they tried to take it out. So he carried it around, somewhere behind his small intestine, moving as gingerly as a man cradling a bomb between his thighs. He used to call it women’s names, a different one every visit, and piss constantly when it pressed against his bladder. He’d wink at Mickey and say, “Betty needs me,” as he heaved himself off the couch en route to the can.

It took Mickey a long time to figure out that wasn’t a euphemism for jerking off. Eventually — he can’t remember which — the guy crossed Terry, or just stopped showing up, or maybe even died on his own.

Sometimes, in the years since, Mickey’s felt a little like he’s got a hunk of metal buried in his own abdomen. Like someone stabbed it in there when he was too young to remember, and he’s grown up with it twisting at the middle of him; learned to maneuver his insides around it like a bag lady navigating the train. It’s rusted, over the years, and dulled, and spawned more than one fevered infection. Somehow, in all that time, it’s never gotten any less cold.

He’s learned how how to hold himself so he almost can’t feel it. How to bate the way it saws at him — move deliberately. Walk like your hips won’t ever hold still. Talk like you know you’re winning.

Ian made him want to jump to his feet and _run_ , flat out, and God fucking damn what gets shredded.

\---

The fourth time doesn’t count, because Ian calls all his bluffs.

He calls them from a photograph in the mirror, flipping Mickey off, hiding a smile. He calls them in the form of a mouthy rat-faced redhead in the Alibi bathroom, slamming her hips gamely into Mickey’s ass. He calls them with a fucking feather boa around his neck in some Boystown club, gyrating on Mickey’s lap, coked out and bitch-faced and cold.

He calls them lounging on his childhood bed, after Mickey takes him home. “Are you coming back?” Mickey asks him, meaning — to his fucking _family,_ to Mickey yeah but it’s not like that even fucking matters, he doesn’t give a shit if he gets to know Ian’s okay. But Ian smirks at him and fires back, “Depends. Will you suck my dick whenever I want?”, and Mickey will. He does. He refused to chase after Ian once, and he’s never going to fucking do it again.

So Ian calls his last bluff. The biggest one.

\---

The Alibi is crowded that night. Mickey’s cousins and Dad’s gun club buddies and Svetlana’s hooker friends — some of them are definitely supposed to be upstairs working, Jesus — and the priest from the christening, who’s either dealt with his funeral duties already or decided to throw them over in favor of taking up residence in a corner with one of the off-duty whores. Mickey should shake her down later for anything she makes off of him; there are no free rides in this establishment. Someone’s brought corned beef and cabbage and beets, homemade; he has no idea who.

Ian’s there, too, nursing a beer and shredding peanut shells at the end of the bar.

The threat of his presence is a magnetic pole in Mickey’s head, double pulses of want and fear. If Terry arrives in the wrong kind of mood and sees him — if Ian gets drunk enough to start running his mouth —

Mickey’s worked _hard_ to win back his father’s favor. He doesn’t need this shit.

“Look,” he says, “Svetlana wants you to go.”

Ian doesn’t meet his eyes. “You want me to go?”

“ _No_ , I don’t want you to go.” It’s a fucking lie. The peanuts are tempting; Mickey’s fingers are itching for something to do, something to destroy. He flattens them against his thigh. “This really where you want to spend your day off?” he tries, reasonable, and Ian’s shoulders shiver with irritation and his eyes flick to the ceiling and he says, like he’s setting down a loaded gun on the bartop between them, “You’re here.”

It’s incredibly fucking stupid, how suddenly warm and liquid that makes Mickey’s insides feel.

“Give me a couple hours,” he offers, more gently. “I’ll meet you back at your place.”

He starts to move away. Which means that Ian pitches his voice louder, more carrying, when he says to Mickey’s back, “If you make me leave, don’t come over.”

Mickey _definitely_ doesn’t need this shit. “Why the fuck you acting like a girl, huh?” he demands, moving swiftly back into Ian’s space, and, “Who gives a shit about everybody else? What difference does it make if I lie to them?”

Ian slams a hand down on the top of the bar. “ _Because_ — because you’re not free.”

Oh, fucking great. More idealistic sunrise fucking yoga crap, or whatever Ian’s into these days. There’s nothing to do but play into it; Ian’s got fucking blinders on lately, only sees things how he wants to. That doesn’t explain the way it tugs at Mickey’s chest when he answers, voice low, “Ian — what you and I have makes me free.”

It’s such a line of bullshit.

That’s the fucking moment, of course, that Terry chooses to come banging through the door.

 _Shit,_ Mickey thinks, maybe hisses out loud, and he’s moving. Dad’s always loved babies, never even hit them when they screamed; Yevgeny’s a cute enough kid. Terry takes him, smiling, careful to support his head. “He’s a cute little fucker!” he roars to Svetlana, and Mickey grins like he’s supposed to, cheers how he’s supposed to, claps his dad on the shoulder and accepts a shot glass and doesn’t — doesn’t — _doesn’t_ look over anyone’s shoulder to where Ian sits, glaring and silent, at the end of the bar.

Ian finds him, later. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving.”

Relief nearly cuts Mickey’s knees from under him. He touches Ian’s back, briefly, in gratitude. “Okay. I’ll see you back at the place.”

“No, don’t.” Ian turns, presses his lips together, makes a gesture of economical finality with one hand. “We’re done.”

\---

“What the fuck are you talking about,” says Mickey.

Ian doesn’t even look at him, not properly. “I don’t have any interest in being a mistress anymore.”

“Jesus Christ.” This can’t be happening; it can’t be _fucking_ happening, not now. “When did you get so dramatic?”

Ian turns with a vicious twist to his mouth. He doesn’t look happy, but he does look almost pleased. “When I realized what a pussy you are,” he says, like he’s been saving the words all night, rolling them around in his mouth, tasting them; like he knows how much they’ll fucking sting.

Automatic, Mickey fires back, “Say it again, I’m gonna kick your fucking ass.”

But Ian’s grinning, a fierce, wild, incredulous smile. He’s moving into Mickey’s space, hand to his chest, breath hot on his skin. “Oh, come on. Come on, big guy. You think you’re a tough man? Huh? You’re not. You’re a coward.”

He’s too close. His mouth’s too close. _DANGER, DANGER,_ blares in Mickey’s head.

Mickey can’t step back. He can’t _fucking_ take a step back.

“Fuck you,” he breathes. “You don’t understand this at all —”

“Oh, I do understand,” Ian sneers, cutting him off. “I understand better than anyone that you’re afraid of your father — you’re afraid of your wife — you’re afraid to be who you are.”

He turns away. There’s something hot and horrible twisting in Mickey’s chest.

“Yeah, well, good,” he says. “Leave. The hell do I care, bitch.”

He cares more than he’s ever cared about anything in his fucking life. There are walls inside him crumbling.

Ian’s going. Ian reaches the door.

\---

This one time, when he was high, Ian tried to convince Mickey that time could move for different people at different rates.

“Fuck off,” Mickey’d told him, lazy, stretching satisfied on the bed; “you’re fuckin’ _blazed_.”

“I saw a documentary about it on the History Channel,” Ian answered, undeterred. “Einstein’s relativity. See, Einstein had this idea that — there’s a guy on a train, right? And he’s got a stopwatch. And the train’s moving close to the speed of light.”

Mickey had glanced over, not lifting his head — his view of Ian blurred by the folds of his own shirt across his chest — and answered, “That Einstein fucker must never have taken the El.”

“Shut up.” Ian sat up to reach for his notebook, the one he’s always scribbling things in these days; cracked up ideas and get-rich schemes and flash-in-the-pan ambitions, too fast for Mickey to follow. “Okay, so this guy’s got a stopwatch, and there’s a guy standing by the tracks who’s also got a stopwatch. And — hang on.”

He’d stopped, then, pencil poised over paper, for a long second. Two. His brow furrowed. Mickey reached out and plucked the blunt from his lips, took a deep drag, exhaled through his nose. Watched Ian sitting there, perplexed, and started to laugh.

“You have _no fucking clue_ what you’re talking about, you dipshit,” he cackled. “Talk a big game, with your Einstein and your trains at the speed of light —”

“Shut up!” Ian hit him, lightly, on the arm, but he was grinning. “I’ve almost got it, if you —”

“You got a watch? Get over here and I’ll time _your_ —”

“Time goes _slower_ for people moving _faster,_ ” Ian objected, as Mickey hip-checked him, straddled him, planted his hands on Ian’s biceps to pin his arms to the bed. “Fuck you,” he added, hips surging, powerful and abrupt, to grind his dick against Mickey’s ass; “just ‘cause you never read a book in your life —”

“Yeah, then how do you explain your shitty endurance, fuckin’ jackhammer?” Hands on Ian’s fly, his own.

“You’ve got it backward. And you’re one to talk.”

“Prove me wrong then,” Mickey’d said, and Ian had, and he’d all but forgotten the whole thing by the time it was over, brains fucked right out of him and little missed, but there’d been something — something that stayed with him. Nagging and persistent.

He’s thought about mentioning it to Ian, more than once. _Hey, that Einstein fucker say anything about_ losing _time? Like, when you weren’t drunk or high or anything, but you still don’t remember it?_

_What about when you forget for a while that you aren’t still a little kid?_

It’s a flimsy premise for the question, and he knows it. He still wants to ask — has always wanted to ask, since he woke up that evening with a roiling stomach and a hammer in his skull and nothing but fragments of memory — pulling his dad off Ian — _How bad did he hurt you? How bad did he fucking hurt you? What did he do?_

Maybe he’s always been moving too fast. Or too slow. What the fuck ever. Running in place, spinning dizzy orbits around the son his father thinks he should have. Maybe he’s been so busy busting his lungs that he hasn’t even noticed the whole fucking world passing him by.

Tonight, though, Mickey doesn’t lose time. He has too much of it. More than anyone else in the bar. It gels up, freezes — ticks back into motion, one patron at a time.

He has to bang the counter twice to get them to shut up; has to shout over the crowd. “Hey! Excuse me! I’d like everyone’s attention, please!”

Ian’s already in the door to the street. It’s already open. He hangs there, half-turned, eyes unreadable. The music cuts out — Kevin.

“I just want everybody here to know,” says Mickey, loud over the sudden hush, “I’m fucking gay.”

\---

Ian’s still standing just inside the door. _Tick._ He pushes it closed.

The music starts again. The gazes hemming Mickey in flip away; _tick, tick, tick._ Conversations rumble back to life.

Behind him, someone is dancing. Svetlana arches her eyebrows at him — _tick_ — unimpressed.

_Tick._

Terry roars and flips his table, plates and glasses flying. “I’ll fucking kill you, you son of a bitch —”

_Tick._

His father charges.

Mickey stands his ground.

\---

He’s never fought before.

Mickey lands the first punch. Takes Terry’s to the cheek and backpedals into the counter behind him, fumbles, finds a beer bottle to smash over his father’s head.

He’s _never fought before._ He’s a dead man, probably — Terry takes him down, he sees blood, tastes bone — but he’s still here, still feeling every second of it, still — _Ian_ —

Pulling Mickey’s father off him, like Mickey did once, on a morning he forgot. “Wanted to do this for ages,” he yells, and breaks Terry’s nose.

He’s never fought before, and there’s good fucking reason. He’s too small, too weak, too invested in his own preservation; he’ll never beat Terry in a fair fight. He needs — furniture, weapons, a knee to the groin.

A chair smashes across Ian’s back — Uncle Ronnie. “Holy shit!” Ian yelps, he’s okay, and Mickey wants to — laugh — wants to laugh and wants to kiss him and wants to stand back to back with him and scream out their defiance and beat all these fuckers into the fucking _floor._

Ian screams, primal, and charges for Ronnie.

Mickey levers himself upright just as his father starts to do the same. For a moment, they only stare at each other. “Fucking faggot,” breathes Terry, eyes locked and vicious, almost inaudible under the screams and smashing furniture. “Need your fucking boyfriend to protect your faggot ass —”

Mickey grins. There’s blood on his teeth. “Yeah, sometimes,” he agrees, and swings another punch for his father’s head.

They’re on the floor; they’re rolling together. Punching, grasping. Terry’s screaming incoherent insults, and Mickey is too, elbowing his father in the head, kicking. He struggles free, and Terry catches his ankle; he stomps with his other foot, trying to break Terry’s wrist.

The blow he strikes is glancing. He falls, but he’s free; lashes out with both feet and hits Terry hard on the hip. He’s never fought before —

He’s never fought before, but he does now. Fights with his knees and his teeth and a discarded pool cue, ramming it into his father’s ribs. Fights with cookware, crockpots flying, cabbage spilling slimy across the floor.

He can see Ian holding his own. Blood all down his face and broken glass like glitter in his hair but he’s grinning, he’s swinging a fucking table leg, and Mickey’s moment of distraction brings him down; his dad’s grappling him, pinning him, and Mickey takes a page out of Ian’s book and fucking headbutts him in the face.

He misses, a little. His own cheek throbs with pain. But there are blue lights strobing on the walls, officers dragging them apart — “fucking faggot,” Terry’s yelling, “get out of my house, you pole-smoking queer —” and Mickey’s shouting, rejoicing, “Fuck you, don’t worry about it! I’ve been living at Ian’s since you’ve been in the can, bitch! Guess what we’ve been doing, Daddy? We’ve been fucking! And I _take it._ He gives it to me _good_ and hard and I fucking like it — fuck you! I suck his dick. I fuckin’ love it —”

“What’ve I gotta do to get you to talk dirty that way to me?” Ian asks, once they’ve hauled Terry away. He’s pacing and still with a bonfire blazing in his eyes, not quite caught up to his own joke; then he’s stopping short, turning. “Jesus, Mickey — I’ll grab you your coat.”

Mickey looks down. He’s covered in snow, and shivering; he hadn’t noticed. He’s not entirely sure he’s cold. “Fuck you, Gallagher,” he says, and Ian flips him off habitually and disappears through the Alibi’s door.

Mickey stares down at the sidewalk. At his trembling hands. He fucking fought back, and he won.

\---

Ian comes out wearing his own coat. It’s the same one he had on, in Mickey’s bedroom, that first time they ever fucked. With a force that almost makes him vomit, Mickey remembers — ten minutes ago, twenty — Ian shrugging it on. Leaving him. Twin stripes of orange lining, framed in the gap of the door.

“You okay?” Ian asks, when Mickey hunches forward, wrestling with his breathing. He fights down the nausea. Glances up sideways, and nods.

“Here.” For a moment, Ian holds out Mickey’s coat as if expecting him to slide his arms into it; Mickey tries to imagine how his body might comply. Then Ian drapes it over his shoulders, sleeves empty, and moves to lean against the parking meter. He reaches into his pocket — not the one where he always keeps lube, the other one — and pulls out a flask.

There are people still flowing in and out of the bar. The hookers fade away as the noise on the street quiets. The door swings open again, and Uncle Ronnie emerges; pauses when he sees Mickey. Surveys him, like he’s considering whether a moderately run-down house is worth the effort of robbing. He doesn’t look much worse for the wear.

“Gay, huh?” he says.

Mickey’ll fucking fight him if he has to. He doesn’t care how fucked up he already is. He will.

Ronnie grins, and moves along.

The spike of relief brings with it a wave of pain. Mickey inventories; his ears are still ringing. He doesn’t want to probe his cheekbone, not yet. He touches a finger gingerly to his mouth. “Think I broke half a fuckin’ tooth.”

Ian tilts the flask up for a moment, then passes it over. “Yeah, my ribs don’t feel so good.”

There’s a smudge of blood on the metal; Ian’s. The bite of the whiskey is heady, grounding, a relief. Ian watches him swallow.

“So you really came out, huh?” he asks, when Mickey’s done, as if that isn’t the whole fucking point of this shitshow.

Mickey studies him. There’s blood thick and sticky down his right cheek, but his whole face is powdered red with it, like he’s been rubbing it around on purpose. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna wear a fucking dress or anything.”

Ian takes the flask back, caps it. “Nobody fucking asked you to.”

Yeah. Mickey guesses they didn’t.

“Though you do have really nice legs,” Ian adds.

Mickey stares. His face feels stiff, congealing. “You’re a fucking dick,” he says, and they’re laughing, both of them, Ian tipping his head back in pain — “Yeah, there. That’s what you get,” but he’s smiling, Ian is too, and —

It’s over. It’s fucking over.

 _I need you,_ he’d never say, _I need,_ but Ian gets it, somehow. Shifts two steps closer and rests his arm, briefly, along the line of Mickey’s shoulders; puts his hand in Mickey’s hair.

It’s stiff with blood and probably cabbage. It bristles unpleasantly where Ian touches it. He pulls Mickey close and kisses him anyway, on the top of his head.

The dull, cold edge of terror is missing from Mickey’s chest. It’s a strange sensation. Foreign. There’s nothing but Ian pressing on his heart.

He thinks, light-headed, _This might be how family’s supposed to feel._

“Hey.” Kevin, at the door. “I called Veronica — she said she’d take a look at you guys, if you come round the house. Pain pills on me; are we square?”

Ian looks at Mickey. Mickey looks down at the concrete. Back up. “Yeah,” he says, “we’re square.”

Kevin glances down the street, then holds out a bottle, half-full, tilting it so amber liquid catches the light. “JB. It’s yours. Don’t tell V. And no mixing with any narcotics, okay.”

Mickey glances at Ian. Ian reaches out. “Thanks, Kev.”

“Yeah,” says Kevin. He looks once more between them, raises a hand as if to give them a thumbs up, then thinks better of it. He waves at them, indistinctly, and disappears back through the door.

Ian uncaps the bottle. Passes it straight to Mickey, this time, eyes on the street, tracking a passing car.

“So,” he says, as Mickey swallows, “you fuckin’ love sucking my dick.”

Mickey chokes, snorts. Bourbon spurts, stinging, out of his nose.

“Fuck you, Gallagher,” he gasps, and Ian grins at him, and down at his hands, and back out at the street.

 _Family,_ Mickey thinks, again. The word makes him feel giddy, incorporeal, disconnected from his own feet.

“Come on,” he says, levering himself to his feet. Everything hurts. He stretches a hand for Ian. “Sooner we get your ribs checked out, sooner we can go home.”

“Yeah?” Ian takes it, lets Mickey pull him forward. “Which one’s home?”

It’s only through a great effort of compassion that Mickey doesn’t elbow him in the ribs. “Don’t make me fuckin’ say it.”

Ian stops short on the sidewalk. He’s grinning. His grip is tight on Mickey’s hand, not letting him pull away. “Say what?”

Mickey rolls his eyes. He stares fixedly up at the street lamp as he says, “Whichever you’re at. You asshole.”

Ian lets out a whoop of laughter that cuts off abruptly; he bends over, grinning helplessly, clutching his side. And Mickey can’t help himself, can’t fucking help himself, he pulls Ian in by the back of the neck and kisses him once, clumsy, bumping his already-tender nose. “Fuck. Ow.”

Ian’s still grinning when he steps back. He reaches for Mickey’s hand again as they fall into step, and Mickey bats him away; Ian catches his wrist.

It’s sore, sprained maybe, but Mickey doesn’t want to tell him that. He puts up a token resistance as Ian interlaces their fingers. Swings their arms together, walking down the street, like they’re going to a fucking picnic. “What if I want a baby?”

“What about this whole gay thing makes you think I can get fucking pregnant?”

“You already have a baby. At Svetlana’s.”

When exactly it became Svetlana’s, Mickey has no fucking idea. He has no idea what Ian’s asking, either. “Yeah, sure.”

Ian’s smiling. Mickey shakes his head. They turn the corner, away from the streetlights and traffic, and start down the next block. Mickey swigs again from the bottle, coughs. He ducks his head to spit blood and mucus onto the street.

The grip on his hand tightens. Just for a moment. _Family._

They limp on together, into the welcoming night.


End file.
